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Austria and Switzerland warn of dangers of hard border

Pressure on Theresa May’s Brexit negotiators mounted even further today with a joint statement from Austria and Switzerland about the carnage hard borders invariably cause.

“Just look at what happened to us,” said Hans “Mad Dog” Thielemann, allegedly a divisional commander of the Austrian Republican Army.

“At first, we didn’t see any problem with having a customs border between our two countries, given that Austria is in the EU and Switzerland isn’t.”

“That’s right,” agreed his Swiss counterpart Anton “The Axeman” Muller, who denies being a prominent member of the Tyrolean Volunteer Force. “But in no time at all, our two populations had formed violent paramilitary groups, bombing each other’s pubs and administering punishment beatings and kneecappings to the civilian population.”

“Yes,” Thielemann agreed, “And this example shows that it’s definitely the presence of a border that’s the problem in Northern Ireland, not the fact that the people who live there are violent lunatics.”

The Stormont Assembly was asked for a comment, until someone remembered it hasn’t sat for nearly two years now following a furious row about whether multi-page documents should be stapled in the top left or top right hand corner.